On the 18th of February, Dr Zach visited Silverton PS to talk to LC4 about The Stand Up Project. The Stand Up Project is a school program, created to reduce bullying.
Whilst visiting Silverton, Dr Zach chose a group of around twenty students to represent Silverton PS as SUP Leaders. Their job is to help prevent bullying in Silverton. In the Stand Up Project, the students are the teachers. Dr Zach, as well as the Silverton teachers involved in the Stand Up Project, let the children explore their leadership roles, and give them the responsibility to do their own work.
Whilst being a SUP Leader, the children will use multiple ways to inform Silverton of bullying. They have put up posters around the school, and have already spoken in two presentations, one with a group of parents, and another with the full staff of Silverton, where they got to give the teachers homework!
Soon, the SUP Leaders will be hosting a class or two to some Grade 3 4’s giving them fun activities, and teaching them how to be an upstander – not a bystander.
Informing our school about bullying is an important cause, as bullying is a worldwide problem, and bystanding is helping it grow around the globe.
Every day, thousands of students around the world stay home on school days because they feel insecure at school – due to bullying. Teaching the students of Silverton to be an upstander is getting one step closer to ceasing bullying from schools.
When the Grade 3/4s have their lesson with the SUP Leaders, they will learn different ways to be an upstander. One example is The Four D’s. The Four D’s are 4 options to do when you see somebody getting bullied.
The first D stands for Direct. If you see someone getting bullied, you can directly talk to the bully and tell them to leave the other kid alone. Although, SUP Leaders don’t encourage children to describe people as ‘the bully’, or ‘the victim’. Instead, we get them to say ‘target’, or ‘kid who was mean’.
The second D stands for Distract. You can use this skill when you see someone getting bullied by distracting them, like saying “Hey, Tom, are you still going to footy club today?” or maybe accidentally dropping a book in front of them, and apologising whilst picking it up. This will let the kid who was mean know that you know what they are doing, and give the target time to walk away.
The third D stands for Delay. Maybe you think it would be best not to get involved in the situation at that moment, or you didn’t have time. In that case, you could delay your actions and speak to the target afterwards, asking them if they are OK.
The last D stands for Delegate. If the situation is bad enough, it might be best to use delegate, by bringing another person into the situation. This could be a teacher, parent or another trusted adult that you could bring to help sort things out.
There are many other ways to be an upstander, and anybody can be one. In fact, if all of Silverton works together, we could help with the decrease of bullying in Victoria!
By Zahra M, SUP Leader – 5/6 M